2016/11/02

Warmaster Revolution: Introduction

Warmaster
Revolution (WMR) is a project supported by Czech Warmaster community. It aims to
implement Warmaster Ancients rules into Warmaster Fantasy. Main motivation for
this project is the fact (stated by Rick Priestly himself), that WMA is in fact
second edition of Warmaster that was firstly released for historical
environment.

Unfortunately for us who love the Old World, the version for
fantasy setting has never come to light. This fact motivated us to check WMA
rules to see how would have the second Warmaster edition looked like.

Though
Warmaster is very well working rules system, it is obvious, that WMA are simply
advanced version especially regarding combat. Apart from introduction of
skirmishers and light cavalry which was not planned for fantasy setting due to
miniatures (also confirmed by Rick), it clears all the blind spots that
occurred in WM. The main differences are in limitation of number of orders, number of combat rounds and
introduction of new infantry support rules which make infantry (unlike in WM)
adequate tactical force. For these changes, the supremacy of cavalry over
infantry is gone and the course of events tends to go less random, not
mentioning bunch of minor rules adjustments making situations clearer.

Our
community is not the first to discover the advantage of WMA over WM. French
community rewrote whole WMA rules for fantasy setting and named it Warmaster
Evolution. Unfortunately for us they did it in French. And as none of us can
speak or read French, we decided to make our own version written in English so
everyone can check it. So that’s where the name Warmaster Revolution comes from. However
we didn’t opt to do complete rewrite as French guys did. Because lots of rules in
WMA are still the same as in WM, we implemented the changed parts (mostly
combat) into WM rules preserving its original structure (which is slightly
different in WMA).

Compiled
texts are in their original versions changed only where absolutely necessary to
fit into WMA environment.

What was
overtaken from WMA:

Command
phase – maximum of 3 orders to a unit in row

Movement –
Drive back – units driven back move as one block without rearranging stands

Sequence of
combat – maximum of two rounds of combat, if enemy is wiped out unit can
advance 20cm and fight another two rounds in the same turn, no charge bonuses
for advance. If enemy is not wiped, victorious unit can fall back or carry on fighting
in enemy’s next turn with all the bonuses and wounds being carried over from
the previous turn.

Attacks – all
stands must fight to their front edge if they can, stand has always at least 1
Attack,

Support –
supporting units are part of combat and can pursue, when infantry charging on
initiative charging unit can take one unit with it to get support, supports
count before combat round

Fall back –
unit can only fall back outside its “line of sight area”.

End phase - Units brought down to 1 stand from 3 count as 0.5 point for purpose of break point"

There are
some rules in WMA that are obviously not suitable for fantasy environment so we
decided to leave them out.

-1 Command penalty for enemy in flank or rear
zone - To get into enemy's flank or rear in WMA is a matter of real tactical
skill. Not so much in WM with all the flying units and spells such as Mirage.

Maximum of 60cm visibility -
There are some units (e.g. Trebuchet) that have range over 60cm, and that would
colide with maximum 60cm visibility. However to prevent flyers to charge 100cm
we added this generally used house rule into Optional rules.

There are
also some rules in WM we thought they should stay and are not included in
WMA.

Bursting through friendly
units - In WMA no rank & file units can move throught other friendly
r&f units under any cirtumstances. This ability was assigned to skirmish
units. However there are no skirmish units in WM (not counting the Empire
skirmishers who are based on different principles), so we felt the option to
move through friendly units during evade should remain. In fact it’s not a big
deal as this rule is used very rarely.

Line of Sight for Shooters -
We liked the straight-forwardness of WM LoS system and didn’t feel the real
need of change here. Furthermore we felt that for scale WM rules represent
is the WMA shooters' line of sight not suitable. In game where one regiment
represents hundreds of men you don't need an order for bolt thrower to pivot on
spot.

We also
added a chapter with Optional rules. These are the rules that are neither in WM
nor WMA. These come mainly as an unprocessed suggestions from the last (at
least until 2016) big international WM playtest weekend held in 2013 in Bergen
op Zoom.

There are also two optional rules that come from inside our community.
They may seem the most “game breaking” ones, but they work really well and we
like them a lot.

One of them allows units to move even when failing to receive
an order but only to some limited extent and when it is the first order to a unit in row. It doesn’t have that big impact on the overall game as it might seem on
the first glance thought. Games tend to be slightly more dynamic, less
frustrating and results less dependent on just one or two successful command
rolls. The main inspiration for this optional rule comes from Epic Armageddon,
where it works in similar way.

So that’s about it. Those who are interested in
trying it, enjoy. We are always glad for any feedback.

6 comments:

Hi folks, here in the far north of Germany is also a very small group of Warmaster - Players. Its really great to see, you are working on this project!

A little hint from my side: Probably its possible, to add (no, not German...) but English "Buttons" down here. Ive had to run the Babblefish, to get the meaning of "okomentovat" or "Odhlasit" and so on....

Hi Dan, thanks for your quick response. Our group is from the Northern part of Germany, close to Netherland and the North Sea. (Next bigger city is called Oldenburg). About Warmaster: We are just four players, what includes my son and me. We "switch" from time to time the systems we play. Actually we are playing Planetfall / Firestorm Armada. But we still play from time to time Warmaster. It´s a "closed system", no fear anymore, that Games Workshop can mess with..^^^We are checking your changes, and you will get some ideas about it - promissed!

Warmaster is a ruleset for tabletop wargames written by Rick Priestley, published by Specialist Games (a division of Games Workshop, and set in the Warhammer Fantasy setting. It is different from Warhammer Fantasy Battles in both appearance and gameplay. It is intended for 10 –12 mm miniatures. Basic troops are based on stands, of which typically three make a unit. Generals, Heroes and Wizards are mounted individually or with their retinue.

We are community from Czech republic [CZ] and we want to say: Warmaster is living.

Why Revolution ? Because we are working on and testing updated version of WM, which will contain some aspects of WM Ancients. You can find more about WMR here.